Author Shannon Edwards // Place New Farm
When it comes to the auction process, people are often stopped by the fear of ‘what if my house doesn’t sell?’
The good news is, real estate agents are here to help take away that fear and create tailored campaigns to ensure your home sells.
A common method of selling, one that more often than not delivers great results, is putting your home ‘under the hammer’ at auction.
We spoke with Director of Place New Farm, Judy Goodger, who, with over 20-years’ experience, answers the question, ‘What if my house doesn’t sell at auction?’
“With an auction, people often ask me ‘but what if it doesn’t sell?’ and I always say, don’t you worry because with all the right ingredients - it will,” says Judy.
“What’s good about an auction is that there are three stages and the property is bound to sell in one of those stages,” she says.
Stage 1: Prior to auction
Auctions are a magnificent way of selling as they allow us to market the features, benefits and lifestyle of your property, rather than just the price.
When we embark on sale by auction, we undertake a number of processes that we’ve refined in relation to preparing both the sellers and buyers.
In lead up to the auction, your home will be visited by all of the relevant members of the Place sales team, prior to launching the auction campaign.
From there, you’ll receive a weekly written report throughout your auction campaign, as well as a weekly face-to-face meeting with your agent.
Processes like these ensure you understand exactly what’s going on in the marketplace, how the sale of your property is looking and who the potential bidders at the auction will be.
Once your campaign has been launched, on the 14th day, you’ll receive a full marketing review to show the effectiveness of the process.
In the lead up to auction, Place will organise two weekly open home inspections.
These open home inspections ensure that all buyers have an opportunity to view the home - one being held mid-week, and one on the weekend and conduct any searches or arrange any valuations they may need to be able to bid on the day.
On top of this, we have a huge database of buyers who are on the hunt for a property just like yours, and we will invite these people to attend the auction, as well as people throughout your neighbourhood.
Stage 2: At auction
It’s true that most of life's biggest decisions happen in the heat of the moment.
And in fact, during the auction is where approximately 72 per cent of properties will sell and it’s this stage we love and our auctioneer’s have a real talent to extracting the emotional price.
It’s the role of your auctioneer to drive up the bidding, to be persuasive and of course to keep the audience engaged and excited. Our auctioneers all have at least 15 years personal auctioneering experience each so they know how to work the crowd effectively.
What’s great about an auction is that it generates a sense of urgency amongst buyers.
This is due to there being a set ‘end date’ for the sale of the property, pressuring buyers to make a decision on the day.
We have a very high success rate at auction as the bidders feel a sense of emotional competition and fear of loss.
At an auction you’ll have a mix of competitive bidders and potential buyers that often see the selling price exceed the expected value of the property.
Stage 3: After the auction
If a property doesn’t sell under the hammer then we have stage three, after the auction known as the Post Auction stage.
In this stage, we work with a heap of buyers who weren’t in the position to bid under the auction conditions, but they are still interested and need to have a little of flexibility around the terms of their officers. This is no different to an offer being made in a private treaty sale in much the same time frame so we feel we are offering our sellers the best of both opportunities.
We find It’s usually between 48 hours to a week after the auction that final offers are made and often to buyers who have seen the property during the auction campaign and were waiting for their opportunity.
What’s great is throughout the whole process, from when a buyer first sees the house through to the auction process we’re giving feedback for the seller.
This provides the seller with a list of what people like and dislike about the property, giving the seller an idea of what the market is looking for and importantly, where the buyers feels the price sits in the market place.
A professionally organized and run tailor made auction campaign ensures that we always expose your home to as many genuine buyers over a concentrated time frame as we can giving sellers a true understanding of what the market price is and the buyers a level playing field to bid on, so that everyone’s happy.
Here’s an examples of one of our many auctions that have run successfully in the past.